The Future of Work

There are a few macro trends that are very related. They are:

• A steady increase in single person households
• A rise in freelancers and self-employed workers
• A rise in remote work due to more flexible work conditions and hybrid remote work options
• A rise in remote work from established companies in balancing safety during the Pandemic.

A more flexible work-life balance means younger workers expect to have the option of working at least 50% of the week at home. This is what companies like Microsoft are responding to.

As GenZ workers become even more mobile-native and as Alpha become more like AI-natives, the future of work will continue to shift.

Microsoft is not as ambitions as some companies in its pivot to remote work. However it's still progress of some kind. Microsoft employees were told this week that they will be able to work remotely less than 50% of the work week once it’s safe to return to offices.

• Employees can work from home full time with manager approval.
• They can also move to a new location for remote work, with salaries adjusted based on geography if their manager approves.

This salary adjudgment is a huge scam and proliferated by companies such as Facebook. It's a productivity boost in an era where new hiring is frozen. Millennials usually take work-life balance more seriously and Silicon Valley and BigTech are adjusting to their preferences.

Microsoft last told U.S. employees to expect to work remotely until at least January 2021. Of course the Pandemic is likely at least a 3-year event. However in the future of work, there are many other trends that are leading to a more remote, freelancer based and self-employed type work reality.

The pandemic has just accelerated these trends, like many aspects of digital transformation. The exodus from major urban centers is very real, as people find the right fit for them in terms of remote work and cost of living arrangements. Geographical mobility is high, but not class mobility. The new normal for GenZ and Alpha cohorts is a less forgiving work reality, even though it seems like it's better. It's a debt based reality they must contend with.

When companies like Microsoft say this is some permanent epic shift, they don't tell you about the salary adjudgments. That's not in the headlines. The salaries adjusted based on geography is very problematic in the treatment of tech workers and even software developers. Is it our skills that are valuable or is it our location?

The debate of whether remote work is more productive is a redundant one. For women, mothers and female professionals, it's not even necessarily a better deal. Work life balance does require boundaries in many cases, otherwise new kinds of burn-out and mental health problems will occur. Big Tech is a male dominated culture, with bottom lines at the core of decision making not employee well-being.

According to Caroline Fairchild, before the pandemic, flexibility was among the top perks requested by working women. In some ways, the public health crisis has provided that — more employees are working from home. But nearly 200 female executives have taken to LinkedIn to share how remote work isn’t working for them due to the additional responsibilities they’re taking on at work and at home. So here we have a bottleneck, some aspects of remote work could actually be terrible for women working in technology and BigTech companies.

For young people, female professionals, minorities, vulnerable professionals of any kind, the pandemic is not just a time of uncertainty, it's a time of burnout, career dissatisfaction and major life-work balance issues. BigTech isn't likely to address these concerns well, since its leadership continues to be male dominated, with predictably male patterns of thinking.

While most employees will be able to easily take advantage of the less than 50 percent working from home option, some roles will be difficult, or even impossible, to permanently transition to remote. While Zoom calls have become part of our lives, and while it's great for Business or for Microsoft Teams or Slack, the mental health (loss of productivity) aspect needs much more study.

Covid-19 is training us to stay home more, but we aren't necessarily happier. Remote work is a blessing and a curse, as is the precarious freelance life some of us have chosen as career trajectories shift in a constantly changing world. The K-shaped recovery doesn't just impact equality, it will impact the very fabric of the future of work and work culture.

The new normal won't always be better.

“Women are expected to be super women in general and now, with this pandemic, the perspective has not changed. And more tasks have been added to our ever-growing list,” said Mamta Suri, a senior engineering manager at WorkDay.

The new normal doesn't look better for young people, female professionals or a world where basic equality is still a struggle. BigTech has financial incentives to parcel out remote work to its employees. Twitter, Google and Microsoft with all their perks, aren't some super progressive cultures where work-life balance issues or mental health burdens are magically solved. In the spirit of companies like Deloitte, things are changing, the culture of work is evolving, but still has a long ways to go.

The future of work is in flux and many of the most vulnerable Americans will permanently churn form the labor force during Covid-19, just as the richest 1% have gained more than 25% of their wealth during this "incredible time of digital transformation". GenZ and Alpha cohorts won't have as many incentives to have children, in such a work culture as we are not deliberately creating. That will have economic impacts on our consumer economy that we cannot even imagine.

BigTech think they are the leaders, pioneers and innovators. But in some ways they are also the ones that imprison us in new systems of institutional inequality. They lack the long-term vision of the trends or where their profit-motives might lead society as a whole. For young people and vulnerable employees, they must just go along for the ride.

Microsoft referred to the new policy as a “hybrid model". I wonder what these companies are doing to help retain their female employees at such a time of crisis? While Microsoft employees will be allowed to move across country for remote work, compensation and benefits will change and vary depending on the company’s own geopay scale. Does all this sound like a good way to empower women or young people? Microsoft has more than 166,000 employees, according to its latest reported data.

Amazon drivers and warehouse workers are some of the most grueling jobs one can have. Google "consultants" don't have the same perks as real employees. BigTech is creating jobs, but not necessarily great ones. They are also automating other industries that are accounting for major job losses, but none of this is expressible or easily explained. They don't commission studies on that sort of thing. Working from home can be a luxury or a curse, but the future of work has to put people first, not just profits.

I hope you enjoyed this op-ed and it would be interesting to hear your opinion in a comment below. You can also join the Last Futurist to keep in touch with all of the various Newsletters and articles we write.

How does remote work impact your life during this period and do you see it sticking in the future?

What are some of the pros and cons for you?